'Blade Runner' Sequel Confirmed, With Original Creative Team

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Director Ridley Scott and writer Hampton Fancher, who worked together on Blade Runner, are now in talks for a sequel, according to reports.

A press release from Alcon Entertainment (which produced Insomnia, The Wicker Man remake, The Blind Side, and The Book of Eli) also said Thursday that the new movie would take place "some years after the original," according to Slashfilm and other reports. A release date hasn't been announced.

A message left with Alcon had not been returned by press time.

One of the most iconic science fiction movies ever made, 1982's Blade Runner was nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Visual Effects and Best Art Direction). The movie appears on a number of best science-fiction lists, including the The Guardian, which ranked it the best science-fiction movie ever made, and IMDB, which ranks it 16th among its best science-fiction movies list. However, it failed to win the 1982 Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film, with the prize going to E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial.

"It is a perfect opportunity to reunite Ridley with Hampton on this new project, one in fact inspired by their own personal collaboration, a classic of cinema if there ever was one," Alcon's co-chief executive officers Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove said in a joint statement.

Scott also will produce with Johnson and Kosove as well as Bud Yorkin and Cynthia Sikes Yorkin. Frank Giustra and Tim Gamble, chief executives of Thunderbird Films, will serve as executive producers, Alcon said.

Fancher adapted the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into Blade Runner. Scott and Fancher originally conceived of their 1982 movie as the first in a series of films incorporating the themes and characters from the Dick book, Alcon said in its statement.

Scott confirmed his work on the sequel in an interview with The Daily Beast, also noting that it would feature a female protagonist - consistent with Scott's other films, including Alien, his current film, Prometheus, and Thelma and Louise.

"Funny enough, I started my first meetings on the Blade Runner sequel last week," Scott said, according to the site. "We have a very good take on it. And we'll definitely be featuring a female protagonist.

That also probably means, as ScreenRant noted, that Harrison Ford's character Decker Cain probably won't be the focus of the film.

Mark Hachman Mark joined ExtremeTech in 2001 as the news editor, after rival CMP/United Media decided at the time that online news did not make sense in the new millennium.
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